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Reassuring lies don't belong in climate debate

Senator George Brandis fights for your right to debate - even if you don't know what you're talking about, writes John Birmingham. Photo: Andrew Meares

Everyone’s favourite Queensland senator, George Brandis, came over all Voltairean last week, defending to the death the right of complete idiots and knaves to say whatever they want about climate change. To be fair to Brandis, a professed believer in man-made climate change, he was making a larger point about discourse, about the importance of the free exchange of ideas.

I do wonder though if the senator might have been misinformed both about Voltaire and the meaning of the word "debate". The Frenchman never actually wrote or even said the phrase so often attributed to him, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. That stirring call to arms was actually the work of a woman, Evelyn Hall, writing under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre (because who wants to listen to a woman, right?) in a 1906 biography, The Friends of Voltaire. Still, half a point for the classical reference. There should be more of it.

A point off, however, for claiming that unnamed climate change proponents (informally known as "highly qualified scientists") had adopted "medieval tactics" in the debate.

As much as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would probably love to put the scourge and the hot irons to the likes of the Koch Brothers for funding a grotesque and villainous campaign against not only climate science, but the very idea of science itself, I don’t believe we’re there yet.

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I don’t think anyone has actually been burned alive in a town square or had their tummy cut open and the bowels drawn out as part of the ongoing discourse.

S’good idea though. We may even get there in a couple of decades, once enough people are starving.

I kid! I kid! I kid because I care, George.

But just as it's an exaggeration to imply that the rejection or even mockery of denial is akin to the organised mass slaughter and torture employed by the Catholic Church to defend its most sacred fairy tales once upon a time, we may well be getting to the point where people who are doing nothing except telling reassuring lies shouldn’t be given the imprimatur of taking part in a debate.

Oh sure, let them keep lying their arses off. Because, you know, Voltaire. Or Evelyn. But let's not pretend there is a debate over the central question.

That science is settled and has been for years. We’re killing ourselves and the planet with our civilisational addiction to burning fossil fuels for energy. Climate science, like all good science is riven with debate and disagreement, but it’s debate and disagreement over the details, not the whole.

If any marginal contention at the edges of a topic means the central question is unsettled, we can all go back to smoking a pack of high tar cigarettes a day, because maybe smoking kills you 117 different ways, or maybe it’s 125. Damn those anti-cigarette scientists. They can’t agree on anything. Their so called research is a joke and they’re probably just after more research funding.

Andrew Bolt, Lord Monkton and resentful sock and sandal wearing white men of the Sunshine Coast who have already stopped reading to cut straight to the jabbering bullshit in the comments below, they’re all entitled to their opinions.

But their opinions aren’t science and no matter how loudly they repeat them over and over and over again, they’re not part of "the debate" either. They’re just sound and fury signifying a corporate agenda which will eventually kill millions in search of profit.

192 comments so far

The one thing that the deniers forget is that they may be entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts.

When they can debate using facts and evidence supported by science, not the psuedo-science they spout, then they can join in. Until then, they should shut up and start learning to read and comprehend the peer reviewed research.

Commenter

Chronos

Date and time

April 22, 2014, 12:23AM

Please, please, who is going to defend us from these obnoxious warmists that demand that those who do not believe the science is settled should be keel hauled then drawn and quartered?

Commenter

Muphin

Location

Tewantin

Date and time

April 22, 2014, 6:59AM

The devolution into a debate about belief's is really saddening. This is not religion. The stupid term "warmists" is particularly nauseating. the facts are not debated that teh planet has warmed and that climate change is a reality, its only why that is a matter of debate at all. The Senator defends the indefensible,

Commenter

G Sacramento

Date and time

April 22, 2014, 7:46AM

Isn't it funny how it is the politicians, the religious political party followers, the electrcians, the small business owners, the garbage collectors, the farmers who think that climate change is not occuring.

All the self proclaimed, self qualified, experts having a punt at it!

"Don't let the truth get in the way of greed"

Commenter

Andy

Date and time

April 22, 2014, 8:09AM

Well predicted with the sock and sandals JB, yes that's you Muphin, The science is in and the sceptics that wish to see the debate go on, do so because the fossil fuel industry keeps on burning the planet as the argument rages. The deniers are 3% of the (paid mercenary) science, but 97% of the noise. You sceptics know that Alan Jones get's paid for his rants don't you?

Commenter

cycloniq

Date and time

April 22, 2014, 8:13AM

Please stop calling the people who don't agree with you Deniers !! The "Facts" are actually very hard to find and possibly tainted. The Discourse should be about doing the right thing not whether you believe its happening or not. You can't argue with someone when they say if we are more energy efficient and look after our environment that is a good thing. You can argue the science on climate change and people do all the time. Its the reason Gravity is still a theory even though we all know what happens if you drop something from height !!

Commenter

BigTedd

Location

Brisbane

Date and time

April 22, 2014, 8:15AM

JB to me this is an economic argument not a scientific one. Yes the scientists are 98% prob right. What annoys me thou is the religious fervor that some seem to want to destroy our economy via a carbon price. I will give you a little tip JB. Unless the US and China prices carbon then the rest of the World is peeing into the wind by doing it. Total waste of time. So if China and the US wont do it then neither should we. Anyone who says any different is a partisan fool. All these Gabfests are a waste of time. Get China and the US into a room and tell them to sort it out. Then the rest of the world can follow. If China and the US wont agree (which they wont), then its time to find another way. Forget carbon pricing. It wont work piecemeal.

Commenter

mh

Location

Brisbane

Date and time

April 22, 2014, 9:54AM

@mh, your usual LNP supporting diatribe ! The facts are that the US DOES already price carbon. Emissions trading has operated in the power sector in nine states since 2009. California's emissions trading scheme started in January 2013. Even the LNP environment mouthpiece Hunt recently said "The most heartening development in the past two years has been China's growing commitment to action from its paramount leadership.” Europe has had a Carbon Tax/ETS for more than a decade!So while the rest of the world goes forward with positive action on climate change, these retrograde LNP fools turn the clock back, & now we even have Palmer spouting he will block the idiotic "Direct Action" policy, which no reputable economist nor any climate scientists support. Given he supports the repeal of the CT, we will then have absolutely no action on climate change !! "Australia, the backward country" !!

Commenter

Lefty

Date and time

April 22, 2014, 10:38AM

JB! Great article and you can see the nonsense being pedaled in the comments above about an economic response. China and the US have started to cut emissions and anyone stating otherwise is lying. As you say the science is settled and as a scientist/economist myself I had to be shown proof that it is occurring. When scientists conduct experiments etc they have to use statistics to prove their hypotheses and the statistics have to be to a level whereby the hypthesis (aka man made climate change is warming the globe faster than natural causes) has to be proven to occur 95% of the time. Thus 98% of climate change scientists say it is happening then it is and the deniers have no leg to stand on. These same deniers will accept that a fertiliser will change yield in a crop or a drug will stop some disease (as proven by the 95% statistical analyses the scientists have to do, yet they deny the climate change scientists their results. More importantly agricultural or drug scientists etc are not issued with death threats as some climate scientists were, all because of the coverage given to the deniers that get more prominence, particularly the Murdoch press. There are also several articles published in the scientific literature that the deniers have been led by the same scientists that were paid by the cigarette companies to say that smoking is not harmful. They are not even climate change scientists yet they are the ones that get coverage in the likes of the popular press. We need to have a debate about climate change between the pro and against climate change scientists and that debate should be covered and reported accurately by the press without opinions being added by the likes of Andrew Bolt.

Commenter

Pollyho

Date and time

April 22, 2014, 10:44AM

Dear BigTedd. The facts (or "Facts" as you call them) are actually easy to find. Did you ever look or did someone just tell you they were hard to find? Try http://www.acfonline.org.au/be-informed/climate-change/impacts-threats or http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/basics/facts.html. See, that was easy. I have 50 - 100 more if you'd like. Also a theory in science isn't "just a theory" as we use the expression in common English. Know how many pieces of counter-evidence it takes to destroy a theory? One. Find one example that disproves gravity, climate change or evolution and the whole thing fails. But you've heard there is such evidence you say? What? Where? Produced by whom? Tested? Peer reviewed? "You can argue the science on climate change". Can YOU? Who argues against it? 2 - 3% of the people actually qualified to have an opinion? People like the famous Willie Soon? http://www.desmogblog.com/denial-hire-willie-soon-s-career-fueled-big-oil-coal-and-koch-money Mining execs? politicians who accept massive favours and donations from mining execs? Ignorance isn't bliss BigTedd, it's criminal irresponsibility and it's killing us.